Brothers & Sisters - John & Anna Buchan Edition (Collection of Their Greatest Works). Buchan JohnЧитать онлайн книгу.
On the whole it seemed to me that the place must be a bit of open coast. But the staircases kept puzzling me.
Then I went back to wider considerations. Whereabouts would a man be likely to leave for Germany, a man in a hurry, who wanted a speedy and a secret passage? Not from any of the big harbours. And not from the Channel or the West Coast or Scotland, for, remember, he was starting from London. I measured the distance on the map, and tried to put myself in the enemy’s shoes. I should try for Ostend or Antwerp or Rotterdam, and I should sail from somewhere on the East Coast between Cromer and Dover.
All this was very loose guessing, and I don’t pretend it was ingenious or scientific. I wasn’t any kind of Sherlock Holmes. But I have always fancied I had a kind of instinct about questions like this. I don’t know if I can explain myself, but I used to use my brains as far as they went, and after they came to a blank wall I guessed, and I usually found my guesses pretty right.
So I set out all my conclusions on a bit of Admiralty paper. They ran like this:
Fairly Certain
(1) Place where there are several sets of stairs; one that matters distinguished by having thirty-nine steps.
(2) Full tide at 10.17 p.m. Leaving shore only possible at full tide.
(3) Steps not dock steps, and so place probably not harbour.
(4) No regular night steamer at 10.17. Means of transport must be tramp (unlikely), yacht, or fishing-boat.
There my reasoning stopped. I made another list, which I headed ‘Guessed’, but I was just as sure of the one as the other.
Guessed
(1) Place not harbour but open coast.
(2) Boat small—trawler, yacht, or launch.
(3) Place somewhere on East Coast between Cromer and Dover.
It struck me as odd that I should be sitting at that desk with a Cabinet Minister, a Field-Marshal, two high Government officials, and a French General watching me, while from the scribble of a dead man I was trying to drag a secret which meant life or death for us.
Sir Walter had joined us, and presently MacGillivray arrived. He had sent out instructions to watch the ports and railway stations for the three men whom I had described to Sir Walter. Not that he or anybody else thought that that would do much good.
‘Here’s the most I can make of it,’ I said. ‘We have got to find a place where there are several staircases down to the beach, one of which has thirty-nine steps. I think it’s a piece of open coast with biggish cliffs, somewhere between the Wash and the Channel. Also it’s a place where full tide is at 10.17 tomorrow night.’
Then an idea struck me. ‘Is there no Inspector of Coastguards or some fellow like that who knows the East Coast?’
Whittaker said there was, and that he lived in Clapham. He went off in a car to fetch him, and the rest of us sat about the little room and talked of anything that came into our heads. I lit a pipe and went over the whole thing again till my brain grew weary.
About one in the morning the coastguard man arrived. He was a fine old fellow, with the look of a naval officer, and was desperately respectful to the company. I left the War Minister to cross-examine him, for I felt he would think it cheek in me to talk.
‘We want you to tell us the places you know on the East Coast where there are cliffs, and where several sets of steps run down to the beach.’
He thought for a bit. ‘What kind of steps do you mean, Sir? There are plenty of places with roads cut down through the cliffs, and most roads have a step or two in them. Or do you mean regular staircases—all steps, so to speak?’
Sir Arthur looked towards me. ‘We mean regular staircases,’ I said.
He reflected a minute or two. ‘I don’t know that I can think of any. Wait a second. There’s a place in Norfolk— Brattlesham—beside a golf-course, where there are a couple of staircases, to let the gentlemen get a lost ball.’
‘That’s not it,’ I said.
‘Then there are plenty of Marine Parades, if that’s what you mean. Every seaside resort has them.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s got to be more retired than that,’ I said.
‘Well, gentlemen, I can’t think of anywhere else. Of course, there’s the Ruff—’
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘The big chalk headland in Kent, close to Bradgate. It’s got a lot of villas on the top, and some of the houses have staircases down to a private beach. It’s a very high-toned sort of place, and the residents there like to keep by themselves.’
I tore open the Tide Tables and found Bradgate. High tide there was at 10.17 p.m. on the 15th of June.
‘We’re on the scent at last,’ I cried excitedly. ‘How can I find out what is the tide at the Ruff?’
‘I can tell you that, Sir,’ said the coastguard man. ‘I once was lent a house there in this very month, and I used to go out at night to the deep-sea fishing. The tide’s ten minutes before Bradgate.’
I closed the book and looked round at the company.
‘If one of those staircases has thirty-nine steps we have solved the mystery, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘I want the loan of your car, Sir Walter, and a map of the roads. If Mr MacGillivray will spare me ten minutes, I think we can prepare something for tomorrow.’
It was ridiculous in me to take charge of the business like this, but they didn’t seem to mind, and after all I had been in the show from the start. Besides, I was used to rough jobs, and these eminent gentlemen were too clever not to see it. It was General Royer who gave me my commission. ‘I for one,’ he said, ‘am content to leave the matter in Mr Hannay’s hands.’
By half-past three I was tearing past the moonlit hedgerows of Kent, with MacGillivray’s best man on the seat beside me.
CHAPTER 10
VARIOUS PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA
A pink and blue June morning found me at Bradgate looking from the Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the lightship on the Cock sands which seemed the size of a bell-buoy. A couple of miles farther south and much nearer the shore a small destroyer was anchored. Scaife, MacGillivray’s man, who had been in the Navy, knew the boat, and told me her name and her commander’s, so I sent off a wire to Sir Walter.
After breakfast Scaife got from a house-agent a key for the gates of the staircases on the Ruff. I walked with him along the sands, and sat down in a nook of the cliffs while he investigated the half-dozen of them. I didn’t want to be seen, but the place at this hour was quite deserted, and all the time I was on that beach I saw nothing but the sea-gulls.
It took him more than an hour to do the job, and when I saw him coming towards me, conning a bit of paper, I can tell you my heart was in my mouth. Everything depended, you see, on my guess proving right.
He read aloud the number of steps in the different stairs. ‘Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-nine, forty-two, forty-seven,’ and ‘twenty-one’ where the cliffs grew lower. I almost got up and shouted.
We hurried back to the town and sent a wire to MacGillivray. I wanted half a dozen men, and I directed them to divide themselves among different specified hotels. Then Scaife set out to prospect the house at the head of the thirty-nine steps.
He came back with news that both puzzled and reassured me. The house was called Trafalgar Lodge, and belonged to an old gentleman called Appleton—a retired stockbroker, the house-agent said. Mr Appleton was there a good deal in the summer time, and was in residence now—had been for the better part of a week.